Minecraft: Xbox 360 Profitable Within First Hour, Breaks 24-Hour Sales Records
It might have been months in planning and even longer in its development stages, but the Xbox 360 port of the phenomenally successful Minecraft had already gone profitable within an hour of going on sale this past Wednesday.
Xbox 360 gamers, it seems, have not been shy in shelling out the inflated cost of 1,600 Microsoft Points (around £15) for a game that is already slightly dated when compared with its much older PC brethren – currently in version 1.2.5, PC players can enjoy biomes, enchantable items, NPC villages and more. The game sailed past the red into the black within an hour, and even more impressively went on to amass more than 400,000 sales within its first 24 hours of release.
Revealing the news on Twitter, the ever-affable creator of Minecraft Markus 'Notch' Persson said; “Well then. Saw the official sales numbers for the first 24 hours of Minecraft Xbox 360, and it's very, very good. Profitable in an hour.” He joked the teams at both Mojang and developer of the port 4J Studios would be “celebrating like only slightly socially-awkward game developers can. Much standing around with beers in hand.” Amen to that.
It needn't have taken the most prophetic of predictions to suggest that an Xbox 360 port of indie gem Minecraft would prove a lucrative venture for all license-owner Mojang, developer 4J Studios and Microsoft Studios (in fact, we'd have put our block-built house on it). But don't let that take anything away from Minecraft's 360 debut; this is a success to treasure like excavated rare diamond.
Richard Birkett
